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The messy, angry, long goodbye: negotiations between Megyn Kelly, NBC News become risky

adminOctober 31, 2018

Megyn Kelly at an NBCUniversal event in New York in May. (Mike Segar / Reuters)

Sarah Ellison

Reporter covering the media and its intersection with politics and technology.

October 31 at 5:05 p.m.

The battle between Megyn Kelly and NBC executives went public on Wednesday when Kelly's lawyer accused the network of leaking false information about her. NBC denied the accusation and replied, saying that Kelly's side had been speaking out of place.

The day began with the Daily Mail report on the risky negotiations over Kelly's multi-million dollar contract. "Everything is out of the war," said the owner.

Kelly "is looking to get her $ 69M payment PLUS a $ 10M bonus on the exit package because NBC" destroyed her career ", and threatens to expose the executives," according to the report.

The people close to both sides of the negotiation denied that Kelly had asked for money over the value of his contract, but that was the only thing on which both parties could agree.

Kelly joined NBC in January 2017 with a three-year, $ 69 million contract. His program, which aired during 9 a.m. The hour of the "Today" program was abruptly canceled after she argued that the black face was not an inappropriate disguise for Halloween.

On Twitter, Kelly called for mail coverage and was especially upset by the newspaper's decision to publish photographs of her children. She wrote that the Mail photographer "followed us to my daughter's school, and secretly recorded my 7-year-old son (his classmates as well) and published it. THIS IS NOT GOOD."

Kelly's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, has been negotiating the terms of his separation from NBC for a week. The discussions were affected by language in a joint statement that would announce Kelly's departure from NBC News, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.

Their disagreement centers on the amount of emphasis that should be put on Kelly's black-face comments. People close to her claim that Kelly's comments, for which she apologized on the air, are being used primarily as an excuse for the company and NBC News president Andy Lack to get rid of Kelly, whose program had failed.

Kelly's friends have argued that her aggressive coverage of sexual harassment allegations against NBC News television personalities has alienated her from colleagues and senior management.

Kelly and Lack had several conversations in recent months about the future of the program, its disappointing qualifications and how to solve them.

The two parties do not differ on the money owed to them, these people said.

Freedman issued a statement in which Kelly's journalistic coverage was attributed to NBC. Kelly has told her friends for months that she suspects that NBC employees filter negative stories about her.

"Despite my efforts to handle this process confidentially, NBC News is allowing the media to come forward with completely false and irresponsible reports that disparage Megyn by mistakenly claiming that she has ever asked for more money than her contract requires," says Freedman's statement, an apparent reference to the history of the Daily Mail. "If NBC News is not the source, they have the responsibility as a news division to correct these false claims. Or are they trying in some way to use these fabrications to gain a fictitious advantage in the discussions we are having? "If Andy Lack has lost control, my hope would be that Steve Burke can intervene and not allow blatant lies about our discussions to remain uncorrected."

Burke is the executive director of NBCUniversal.

A spokesperson for NBC News responded: "Unlike Mr. Freedman, who has repeatedly commented to the media during the negotiations, we respect the confidentiality of the process and will not have comments until it reaches its conclusion."